Do distance runners have an innate death wish?
I ask this question in light of a recent article in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, written by a bunch of M.D.s (O'Keefe, Patil, Lavie, Magalski, Vogel, McCullough). Since I'm not exactly up-to-speed on the Latin translation of various body parts and afflictions, and since I have a strong distaste for anything that looks or smells like biology or chemistry, I hope you'll excuse my overly simplistic layman's response.
And I hope that the aforementioned doctors will forgive me, because I disagree with them. Medically, of course, their findings are likely completely accurate and totally sound. Bravo for that, gentlemen, but let's look at what you really did here.
Their article is titled "Potential Adverse Cardiovascular Effects from Excessive Endurance Exercise." In it, they argue that runners who engage in repeated long-distance races or training are doing more harm than good to their bodies. In a recent Competitor Running magazine article about their findings, Dr. O'Keefe surmises that "aiming to run even three marathons every year is 'not a great goal.'" The doctors find that running less than 20 miles per week at an 8:30-10:00 per mile pace is "ideal." They paint a doomsday portrait of freak endurance runners (like those who run marathons, ultra-marathons, Ironmans or even run more than 45 miles per week for training) who are destroying their bodies by engaging in "over-exercise."
Yet the doctors in the Mayo Clinic article fail to put their snapshot of medical analysis and data into a larger perspective.
My grandfather had a saying while I was growing up: "You reap what you sow." From the agricultural revolution, through the Bronze Age, past the Iron Age, a few centuries after the Industrial Revolution and into the Information Age, human beings have changed. Not just socially, technologically or politically. Human beings (that's homo sapiens, I think) have changed structurally--bones, tendons, cartilage, etc--over the course of thousands of years.
In his seminal work, Chris McDougall points out that human beings were "born to run." Our bodies are predisposed to bipedal endurance work, and indeed, before we learned how to garden, mankind had to hunt for our food. Ever so gradually, though, we began a settling process. First, we settled into civilizations. Then into empires and eventually nation-states. From there, we continued our gradual descent through states and provinces, cities, towns, villages and businesses until we arrive at today: into our own houses, automobiles and couches with built-in laptop computer trays, so we never have to get up.
And then, of course, came the accessories to our gradual settling: processed foods, elevators and escalators, taking the bus to school and the advent of running shoes.
I'm sure I'm remembering this from the National Geographic Channel, but animals raised in captivity who are re-immersed back into the wild without any proper training or preparation are far more likely to die quick deaths than those animals of the same species who spend their lives outside of captivity. Why? When you adapt to changes in your environment--and that environment becomes less taxing--you lose the skills required to survive. Do animals simply lose their survival instinct? Or does living in captivity structurally bind them, too?
Human beings, by and large--and especially in the United States--can hardly be said to be living in captivity. And yet, after centuries upon centuries of ignoring our endurance running capability, an attempt by some intrepid athletes to re-capture and push the envelope of human cardiovascular achievement will be seen as un-natural.
But is this suicide? Or is it selfless?
The doctors in the Mayo Clinic article rightly allow that not exercising is a big problem in America. Certainly, exercise is a positive endeavor in an attempt to stay "healthy." Yet, a growing percentage of the population each year is either obese or overweight--and whether we like it or not, this gradually changes the way our bodies are structured; in turn, it changes the way our children will develop and grow, and changes the physical opportunities available to them. Good genes will only take you so far--if the species is on a downward trend, your super-human athleticism is simply an impressive outlier in a genus of lethargy.
Endurance runners run for a number of reasons, and each one is personal. But between runners, there is an undercurrent--the great unspoken truth, if you will--about what we do that will get zero publicity in Runner's World or Flotrack: we are taking it back.
What are we taking back, you ask? How about our ability to be the people our ancestors once were? Hard workers, prolific athletes whose bodies were wired to run far and long and fast--not because they were getting a multi-million dollar shoe contract, but because life demanded that trait.
And here we are, today: in an era where the world is at your fingertips, you do not need to run to exist.
But you can't truly live without running.
And if the structure of our heart muscles begin to degrade because we run too much, so what? If we all run, and continue to run, and teach our children to run far, and they teach their children to run even farther, aren't we expanding the bounds of human achievement? Aren't we increasing the cardiovascular capacity of our posterity?
So yes, Mayo Clinic doctors, there are "Potential Adverse Cardiovascular Effects [of] Extreme Endurance Exercise."
But there is at least one Potentially Awesome Cardiovascular Effect of Extreme Endurance Exercise--and I don't want to toot our own horn too much here, but hear me out:
Mile after grueling mile, day after day--distance runners may be saving humankind.
I ask this question in light of a recent article in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, written by a bunch of M.D.s (O'Keefe, Patil, Lavie, Magalski, Vogel, McCullough). Since I'm not exactly up-to-speed on the Latin translation of various body parts and afflictions, and since I have a strong distaste for anything that looks or smells like biology or chemistry, I hope you'll excuse my overly simplistic layman's response.
And I hope that the aforementioned doctors will forgive me, because I disagree with them. Medically, of course, their findings are likely completely accurate and totally sound. Bravo for that, gentlemen, but let's look at what you really did here.
Their article is titled "Potential Adverse Cardiovascular Effects from Excessive Endurance Exercise." In it, they argue that runners who engage in repeated long-distance races or training are doing more harm than good to their bodies. In a recent Competitor Running magazine article about their findings, Dr. O'Keefe surmises that "aiming to run even three marathons every year is 'not a great goal.'" The doctors find that running less than 20 miles per week at an 8:30-10:00 per mile pace is "ideal." They paint a doomsday portrait of freak endurance runners (like those who run marathons, ultra-marathons, Ironmans or even run more than 45 miles per week for training) who are destroying their bodies by engaging in "over-exercise."
Yet the doctors in the Mayo Clinic article fail to put their snapshot of medical analysis and data into a larger perspective.
My grandfather had a saying while I was growing up: "You reap what you sow." From the agricultural revolution, through the Bronze Age, past the Iron Age, a few centuries after the Industrial Revolution and into the Information Age, human beings have changed. Not just socially, technologically or politically. Human beings (that's homo sapiens, I think) have changed structurally--bones, tendons, cartilage, etc--over the course of thousands of years.
In his seminal work, Chris McDougall points out that human beings were "born to run." Our bodies are predisposed to bipedal endurance work, and indeed, before we learned how to garden, mankind had to hunt for our food. Ever so gradually, though, we began a settling process. First, we settled into civilizations. Then into empires and eventually nation-states. From there, we continued our gradual descent through states and provinces, cities, towns, villages and businesses until we arrive at today: into our own houses, automobiles and couches with built-in laptop computer trays, so we never have to get up.
And then, of course, came the accessories to our gradual settling: processed foods, elevators and escalators, taking the bus to school and the advent of running shoes.
I'm sure I'm remembering this from the National Geographic Channel, but animals raised in captivity who are re-immersed back into the wild without any proper training or preparation are far more likely to die quick deaths than those animals of the same species who spend their lives outside of captivity. Why? When you adapt to changes in your environment--and that environment becomes less taxing--you lose the skills required to survive. Do animals simply lose their survival instinct? Or does living in captivity structurally bind them, too?
Human beings, by and large--and especially in the United States--can hardly be said to be living in captivity. And yet, after centuries upon centuries of ignoring our endurance running capability, an attempt by some intrepid athletes to re-capture and push the envelope of human cardiovascular achievement will be seen as un-natural.
But is this suicide? Or is it selfless?
The doctors in the Mayo Clinic article rightly allow that not exercising is a big problem in America. Certainly, exercise is a positive endeavor in an attempt to stay "healthy." Yet, a growing percentage of the population each year is either obese or overweight--and whether we like it or not, this gradually changes the way our bodies are structured; in turn, it changes the way our children will develop and grow, and changes the physical opportunities available to them. Good genes will only take you so far--if the species is on a downward trend, your super-human athleticism is simply an impressive outlier in a genus of lethargy.
Endurance runners run for a number of reasons, and each one is personal. But between runners, there is an undercurrent--the great unspoken truth, if you will--about what we do that will get zero publicity in Runner's World or Flotrack: we are taking it back.
What are we taking back, you ask? How about our ability to be the people our ancestors once were? Hard workers, prolific athletes whose bodies were wired to run far and long and fast--not because they were getting a multi-million dollar shoe contract, but because life demanded that trait.
And here we are, today: in an era where the world is at your fingertips, you do not need to run to exist.
But you can't truly live without running.
And if the structure of our heart muscles begin to degrade because we run too much, so what? If we all run, and continue to run, and teach our children to run far, and they teach their children to run even farther, aren't we expanding the bounds of human achievement? Aren't we increasing the cardiovascular capacity of our posterity?
So yes, Mayo Clinic doctors, there are "Potential Adverse Cardiovascular Effects [of] Extreme Endurance Exercise."
But there is at least one Potentially Awesome Cardiovascular Effect of Extreme Endurance Exercise--and I don't want to toot our own horn too much here, but hear me out:
Mile after grueling mile, day after day--distance runners may be saving humankind.
